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One important indicator of the denial that results in an academic environment bereft of accountability (an environment in which therefore almost everything is permitted) is the failure to generate statistical accounts of existing malpractice. My inquiries to the American Association of University professors, the Carnegie Foundation for the advancement of Teaching, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA in 1991-1992 yielded but one unfortunate conclusion: No publicly available statistics exist detailing the extent of professorial misconduct in American colleges and universities. While some might argue the failure to generate these statistics means that the problem of professorial misconduct is negligible, I believe the failure to do so strongly suggests the denial I discuss here. —Michael Lewis, Poisoning the Ivy
The editor fought and exposed corruption as a professor or teacher at the institutions listed below, which indirectly helped form me as a dissident thinker. Several years ago, I wrote a weekly column, Blacklisted Professor, for Maincampus.com, now defunct. I have battled with the editors of The Chronicle of Higher Education, the national weekly read by professors, deans, and college and university presidents (see correspondence CHE). As for the high school listed below, People's Press published Total Chaos (2001), an autobiographical novel regarding that experience. Read a selection from the 343-page book at Martha's Vineyard Regional High School. For a rare, honest account of corruption in academe by an academic administrator, read the words of college President Richard Carpenter. For an excellent general account of the suppression of free speech in the nation's colleges and universities, read John Leo's "Free Inquiry? Not on Campus" and check out the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (www.thefire.org).
Bennett College
(Greensboro, NC)
Finally, is it not shameful that a tenured professor at a public university, University of Louisiana at Monroe, William Ryan (see Ryan cartoon), would detest debate to the extent he'd have all mail sent by me "quarantined"? What might a character like that be teaching students, the irrelevancy of democracy? One of his colleagues wrote 52 columns praising his university. I had to fight tooth and nail to get just one column published criticizing that and the university (ULM). Not one professor from ULM dared write such a column. What does that say about the kind of people being hired as professors?
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